Denver is ready to rumble forward with its slow rollout of green composting bins, delivering them this summer to an additional 17,000 taxpayers who were promised free service when the city pivoted to a billed pay-as-you-throw collection program at the beginning of 2023.

The expansion of that service comes after a briefing on the city’s trash and solid waste collection efforts last week that left City Council members grumbling about the plodding pace of composting rollout, unreliable weekly pickups and the still-low rate at which Denver is diverting waste away from its landfill.

Councilman Paul Kashmann, in a briefing before the council’s Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, zeroed in on the diversion rates. City officials say Denverites decreased the volume of waste sent to the landfill last year by 3.5%. Still, 74% of the solid waste collected from residential customers is landing in the dump. The city’s first benchmark goal is to reach a 50% diversion rate by 2027.

“I’m not trying to be rude, but I would have hoped that a couple of years down the line that would have a greater increase overall,” said Kashmann, who voted for the pay-as-you-throw program in 2022.

Starting in June, some 17,000 households in the city’s solid waste collection District 5 will receive postcards from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, or DOTI, asking what size compost bins they would like. Once those green plastic totes arrive, residents are invited to deposit food scraps and yard waste that can be picked up weekly and turned into the nutrient-rich solid additive known as compost.

That district — an area encompassing much of downtown Denver and western neighborhoods including Athmar Park, Baker, Barnum, Villa Park and Westwood — will be just the third solid waste collection territory to receive composting bins since they became free to residents in 2023.

Rollout started last summer with District 2, an area that covers the City Park, Clayton, Cole, Elyria-Swansea and Five Points neighborhoods, among others. District 4, the far northeast neighborhoods of Green Valley Ranch, Montbello and Gateway, followed earlier this year. Between the two, about 13,800 green bins have been distributed.

Roughly 30,000 households that paid for compost before that service was made free to residents have bins, according to DOTI officials. That leaves about 135,000 residents still waiting.

The figures didn’t move the needle for Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer. DOTI plans to expand composting to other solid waste collection districts on the city’s southwestern and northern edges later this year, but that sets up Sawyer’s constituents in east-central neighborhoods including Cherry Creek, Montclair and Hilltop to wait until 2025.

At that May 14 committee hearing, Sawyer critiqued the slow rollout and the city’s still-spotty track record for on-time collection of residents’ trash, recycling and composting. DOTI officials said city crews and contractors are logging a 94% route completion rate so far in 2024, down slightly from the 95% completion rate in 2023.

By Sawyer’s math, a 94% route completion rate would mean the city is missing pickups of at least one bin for more than 10,000 customers every week or well over 500,000 missed pickups each year.

She has concerns that the program — which charges customers between $9 and $21 per month for trash collection depending on their bin size — is not financially sustainable. Residents don’t pay directly for compost and recycling bins. But the customers who are still waiting for their compost bins are getting quarterly $9 credits on their bills as well, further undermining the math.

“With that bad of service, we don’t really have a leg to stand on to raise the cost,” Sawyer said.

The city’s solid waste division is 85% staffed, director Rich Villa said.“We continue to hire all the time,” he added.

When it comes to compost, the slow rollout is not being driven by a lack of bins or the ability to collect the material, according to DOTI.

Nina Waysdorf, the city’s waste diversion and recycling manager, told council members it comes down to education.

Loads of compost that are contaminated with non-compostable materials end up in the landfill, defeating the purpose and only creating more truck trips around town. So the city is taking its time educating residents in new rollout areas about what can be included in the green bins and what can’t. Bins that are found to contain noncompostable trash are tagged with notes explaining the problem, an approach Waysdorf said has been effective.

The city recently signed on with a new contractor for compost processing, solid waste industry giant Waste Management. In an email this week, company spokeswoman Jennifer Wargo said all food waste and yard debris is welcome in compost containers.

So too are 3-gallon biodegradable bags, so long as they have been approved by the Compost Manufacturers Alliance. That’s it for now. Used paper towels, greasy pizza boxes and other items that some commercial compost companies will take remain on the no list.

Waste Management does not accept drop-offs of compostable materials, Wargo said, but Denverites do have other options if they’re tired of waiting for their city bins.

After being offline for months to accommodate construction, the city’s Cherry Creek Recycling Dropoff Center at 7400 Cherry Creek South Drive is set to reopen Tuesday, DOTI spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said. That facility takes all the same material allowed in city curbside compost bins.

There are a host of private companies that provide compost services in the city as well.

One of the more established providers is Compost Colorado, which is now headquartered on the National Western Center campus on the north side of town. The company no longer offers pickup service in Denver, but according to managing director Noah Kaplan, dropoffs — a $20-a-month option — are growing in popularity. The company just added a seventh drop-off location in the city at the Sexy Pizza shop at 1660 Pearl St.

Kaplan agrees with DOTI staff that consumer education is key.

“If you don’t have that buy-in, these programs can’t be successful,” Kaplan said.

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Updated (at 9:12 a.m. on May 24, 2024): Due to an error by a reporter, Compost Colorado’s company name and Noah Kaplan’s title with the company were misstated in the original version of this story, which has been corrected.